1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to multilayer ceramic capacitors, and more specifically relates to a multilayer ceramic capacitor including an outer electrode arranged on a ceramic element body including an inner electrode that is electrically connected to the outer electrode.
2. Description of the Related Art
One of representative multilayer ceramic electronic components is, for example, a multilayer ceramic capacitor disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 10-284343.
As shown in FIG. 4, the multilayer ceramic capacitor has a structure in which a pair of outer electrodes 104 (104a, 104b) are arranged on a pair of end surfaces 103 (103a, 103b) of a ceramic element body 110 having a plurality of inner electrodes 102 (102a, 102b) stacked with ceramic layers 101 serving as dielectric layers to be electrically connected to respective ones of the inner electrodes 102 (102a, 102b). The outer electrodes 104 (104a, 104b) include metal electrode layers 105 (105a, 105b) formed on the outer surfaces of the ceramic element body 110 and containing metal as the main constituent, and conductive resin layers 106 (106a, 106b) formed on the outer surfaces of the metal electrode layers 105 (105a, 105b) and containing resin as the main constituent.
Ni plated films 107 (107a, 107b) are formed on the surfaces of the outer electrodes 104 (104a, 104b), and Sn plated films 108 (108a, 108b) are formed on the surfaces of the Ni plated films 107 (107a, 107b).
Also, the metal electrode layers 105 (105a, 105b) are formed by applying conductive paste containing metal as the main constituent to the ceramic element body 110 and baking the conductive paste. The conductive resin layers 106 (106a, 106b) are formed by applying conductive resin paste containing resin as the main constituent to the ceramic element body 110 formed with the metal electrode layers 105 (105a, 105b), heating the conductive resin paste, and hence hardening resin in the conductive resin paste.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 10-284343 describes that a product with stable quality and high reliability can be obtained by setting the extending length of the metal electrode layers forming the outer electrodes to be a proper ratio to the extending length of the conductive resin layers.
However, in the case of the above-described multilayer ceramic capacitor, when the conductive paste for forming the metal electrode layers 105 is baked in a manufacturing process thereof, the inner electrodes 102 may expand in a stacking direction (thickness direction, height direction, or T direction) of the inner electrodes 102 and a width direction (direction orthogonal to a direction in which the inner electrodes extend or W direction) of the inner electrodes 102. Due to the expansion, for example, as schematically shown in FIG. 5, when viewed from the end surface 103 side of the ceramic element body 110, a crack 111 may be generated so as to extend from a corner portion of the effective region, in which the plurality of inner electrodes 102 are stacked through the ceramic layers 101 and which contribute to generation of capacitance, to a corner portion of the ceramic element body 110. Thus, reliability is decreased.